Post-Mortem

Lootfest for Steam – Post-Mortem

Lootfest is a failed Early Access project that I regret — a big, ugly stain on my developer career. So what went wrong?

Burnout

By the time I got the Steam license, the project had already been in development for seven years, and all I could see were the bugs and issues.

Massive Technical Debt

Lootfest was my learning project — my first fully 3D game, my first networked game, my first menu system, etc. Lootfest 2 became an impossible knot of broken beginner code, which made me want to start over from scratch.

Minecraft Clone Obsession

At the time, there was a huge surge in Minecraft clones, and I felt Lootfest was seen as just another one. As the issue grew, I kept changing the art direction in an effort to look unique.

Unhealthy Lifestyle

When I got the Steam license, it still felt like a ticket to guaranteed success. But as Steam opened up to more and more developers, the pressure to work every hour of every day grew unbearable.

Being a Bad Boss

I invested a lot of my own money to hire someone for a year. I thought giving him complete creative freedom would inspire great work, but it just led to experimentation with a lot of fun features — few of which were ever completed.

No Soul

Stripping out all the wild randomness, as well as the resource collection and crafting, removed what made the game fun in the first place.

Handmade Content

Lootfest started as a “Zelda forever” project — the idea was that if I randomized everything, it could be played forever, right?

But as I removed the randomness, I had no idea how much work it would take to handcraft all the levels. I remember working on a dungeon with a boss for two months, and when it was complete I ran through the level and killed the boss in two minutes - thinking “I’m screwed!”.

Wrong Platform

In the end, Lootfest was a console game for kids and simply not suited for the Steam audience. I also underestimated how different PC development is. I wasn’t alone — just look at other major XBLIG games like Total Miner; we all struggled to adapt.

I will remove Lootfest from Steam in about a month.